Eve
Samples: New water district chief blasts lack of ''fiscal
discipline'' at agency

By Eve Samples

Hundreds of jobs
have disappeared from its payroll and its budget is half of what it
was five years ago — but there's still fat to trim at the South
Florida Water Management District, if you ask the agency's new
director.

To prove this point, Blake Guillory tells a story
about a car.

One of the 500 cars in the district's fleet has
a singular purpose at the agency's West Palm Beach headquarters: It
sits in a parking lot, where a guard occasionally drives it to open
and close a security gate.

''That means somebody's not
getting it,'' said Guillory, who became the district's executive
director in September and makes $165,000 a year.

Guillory
earned a reputation for cleaning house during his previous tenure at
the Southwest Florida Water Management District — and the
former private-sector consultant appears intent on shaking things up
in his new gig, too.

During a visit last week with Scripps
Treasure Coast Newspapers' Editorial Board, Guillory talked about
''changing culture'' at the 16-county South Florida Water Management
District, which plays a leading role in Everglades restoration.

So far, that has meant nitpicking the district's administrative
budget and encouraging managers to find more savings — an
exercise Guillory claims will let the district pump more money into
restoration and flood-control work.

''We're just going
through the process of what's critical and what's not,'' he said.
The district already is planning its 2015 fiscal year budget. It is
projected to be $642 million, down from $1.5 billion in 2010, thanks
in large part to cuts imposed by Gov. Rick Scott.

After
taking office in 2011, Scott pushed for reductions at all five of the
state's water districts, a move that drew criticism from some
environmental advocates.

Guillory reports to nine Scott
appointees who make up the district's Governing Board, and he is
following through on what the governor started.

With about
100 administrative staffers out of almost 1,600 total, Guillory
called the district ''top heavy.''

Guillory cited the fact
that 97 workers left the South Florida Water Management District last
year as part of natural attrition — yet every single one of
those positions was filled.

''We had no fiscal discipline
inside the district,'' he said.

In the past, performance at
the South Florida Water Management District has been measured by
''burn rate,'' he believes.

''Because we didn't want it
taken away from us, so let's spend it,'' Guillory said.

He
plans to change that.

We can expect Guillory to further
shrink the payroll. He also is considering making employees pay more
for health insurance.

Guillory, who replaced Martin County
resident and environmental consultant Melissa Meeker, is laser
focused on dollars and cents. The tax rate for most residents in the
16-county district — which stretches from Orlando to the Keys —
is $41.10 per $100,000 of property value. Most of that money goes
toward restoration work and operations including flood control.

But there's a more important metric for those of us who live in
Martin and St. Lucie counties: the quality of water in our rivers.

First,
he indicated this year's damaging releases into the St. Lucie River
were a relatively new phenomenon. He linked them to the 2008 Lake
Okeechobee Regulation Schedule, failing to acknowledge we've had this
problem for almost a century.

Second, Guillory wrongly
assumed the St. Lucie River sometimes needs water from Lake
Okeechobee during drought years. That might be true on the West
Coast, but it's not the case here.

As the new head of a
territory that includes 7.9 million residents, Guillory has a steep
learning curve.

A few months into his tenure, he has proved
he can cut spending.

Time will tell whether he also can
deliver on solutions for the St. Lucie River, the Indian River Lagoon
and the larger Everglades system.